Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, ...
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Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Indonesian female migrants dominate the island's economic landscape both as factory workers and as prostitutes. Indonesians also move across the border in search of work in Malaysia and Singapore as plantation and construction workers or maids. Export-processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. The book moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. The book portrays globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances. It offers a unique ethnographic perspective, drawing together the worlds of factory workers and prostitutes, migrants and tourists, and creating an account of everyday life in a borderland characterized by dramatic capitalist expansion. The book uses three Indonesian concepts (merantau, malu, liar) to shed light on the mobility of migrants and tourists on Batam. The first refers to a person's relationship with home while in the process of migration. The second signifies the shame or embarrassment felt when one is between accepted roles and emotional states. The third is used to identify those who are out of place, notably squatters, couples in premarital cohabitation, and prostitutes without pimps. These sometimes overlapping concepts allow the book to move across geographical and metaphorical boundaries and between various economies.Less

The Anxieties of Mobility : Migration and Tourism in the Indonesian Borderlands

Johan A. Lindquist

Published in print: 2008-10-31

Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Indonesian female migrants dominate the island's economic landscape both as factory workers and as prostitutes. Indonesians also move across the border in search of work in Malaysia and Singapore as plantation and construction workers or maids. Export-processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. The book moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. The book portrays globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances. It offers a unique ethnographic perspective, drawing together the worlds of factory workers and prostitutes, migrants and tourists, and creating an account of everyday life in a borderland characterized by dramatic capitalist expansion. The book uses three Indonesian concepts (merantau, malu, liar) to shed light on the mobility of migrants and tourists on Batam. The first refers to a person's relationship with home while in the process of migration. The second signifies the shame or embarrassment felt when one is between accepted roles and emotional states. The third is used to identify those who are out of place, notably squatters, couples in premarital cohabitation, and prostitutes without pimps. These sometimes overlapping concepts allow the book to move across geographical and metaphorical boundaries and between various economies.

Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has become the most trade-intensive economy in the world and the richest country in Southeast Asia. This transformation has been accompanied by the ...
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Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has become the most trade-intensive economy in the world and the richest country in Southeast Asia. This transformation has been accompanied by the emergence of a deep generational divide. More complex than simple disparities of education or changes in income and consumption patterns, this growing gulf encompasses language, religion, and social memory. This book explores how expectations and obligations between generations are being challenged, reworked, and reaffirmed in the face of far-reaching societal change. The family remains a pivotal feature of Singaporean society and the primary unit of support. It focuses on the middle generation, caught between elderly parents who grew up speaking dialect and their own children who speak English and Mandarin. In analyzing the forces that bind these generations together, the book deploys the idea of an intergenerational “contract,” which serves as a metaphor for customary obligations and expectations. It examines the many different levels at which the contract operates within Singaporean families and offers striking examples of the meaningful ways in which intergenerational support and transactions are performed, resisted, and renegotiated. The book provides insights into the complex interplay of fragmenting and integrating forces and makes a critical contribution to the study of intergenerational relations in modern, rapidly changing societies and the challenges that Singaporean families face in today's hypermodern world.Less

The Binding Tie : Chinese Intergenerational Relations in Modern Singapore

Kristina Göransson

Published in print: 2009-01-01

Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has become the most trade-intensive economy in the world and the richest country in Southeast Asia. This transformation has been accompanied by the emergence of a deep generational divide. More complex than simple disparities of education or changes in income and consumption patterns, this growing gulf encompasses language, religion, and social memory. This book explores how expectations and obligations between generations are being challenged, reworked, and reaffirmed in the face of far-reaching societal change. The family remains a pivotal feature of Singaporean society and the primary unit of support. It focuses on the middle generation, caught between elderly parents who grew up speaking dialect and their own children who speak English and Mandarin. In analyzing the forces that bind these generations together, the book deploys the idea of an intergenerational “contract,” which serves as a metaphor for customary obligations and expectations. It examines the many different levels at which the contract operates within Singaporean families and offers striking examples of the meaningful ways in which intergenerational support and transactions are performed, resisted, and renegotiated. The book provides insights into the complex interplay of fragmenting and integrating forces and makes a critical contribution to the study of intergenerational relations in modern, rapidly changing societies and the challenges that Singaporean families face in today's hypermodern world.

For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things—most often money—for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, ...
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For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things—most often money—for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at times prohibited by governing elites, today this venerable custom is as popular as ever. This book explores the cultural logic of this common practice while addressing larger anthropological questions concerning the nature of value. The heart of the work integrates Chinese and Western thought and analytics to develop a theoretical framework that the author calls a “materialist aesthetics.” This includes consideration of how the burning of paper money meshes with other customs in China and around the world. The book examines the custom in contemporary everyday life, its origins in folklore and history, as well as its role in common rituals, in the social formations of dynastic and modern times, and as a “sacrifice” in the act of consecrating the paper money before burning it. Here the author suggests a great divide between the modern means of cultural reproduction through ideology and reification, with its emphasis on nature and realism, and previous pre-capitalist means through ritual and mystification, with its emphasis on authenticity. The final chapters consider how the custom of burning paper money has survived its encounter with the modern global system and internet technology.Less

Burning Money : The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld

C. Fred Blake

Published in print: 2011-09-30

For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things—most often money—for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at times prohibited by governing elites, today this venerable custom is as popular as ever. This book explores the cultural logic of this common practice while addressing larger anthropological questions concerning the nature of value. The heart of the work integrates Chinese and Western thought and analytics to develop a theoretical framework that the author calls a “materialist aesthetics.” This includes consideration of how the burning of paper money meshes with other customs in China and around the world. The book examines the custom in contemporary everyday life, its origins in folklore and history, as well as its role in common rituals, in the social formations of dynastic and modern times, and as a “sacrifice” in the act of consecrating the paper money before burning it. Here the author suggests a great divide between the modern means of cultural reproduction through ideology and reification, with its emphasis on nature and realism, and previous pre-capitalist means through ritual and mystification, with its emphasis on authenticity. The final chapters consider how the custom of burning paper money has survived its encounter with the modern global system and internet technology.

The moral practices and concepts that circulate in Minangkabau society in West Sumatra, Indonesia articulate and help manage tensions between conflicting values and conflicting experiences of ...
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The moral practices and concepts that circulate in Minangkabau society in West Sumatra, Indonesia articulate and help manage tensions between conflicting values and conflicting experiences of selfhood, particularly the tension between social integration and individual autonomy. The book examines these tensions ethnographically in multiple arenas: the structure of the city of Bukittinggi and its economic life, the nature of Minangkabau ethnic identity, the etiquette of everyday interactions, conceptions of the self and its boundaries, hidden spaces of personal identity, and engagements with Islamic rituals and moral conceptions. Applying the lessons of the Minangkabau case more broadly to debates on moral life and subjectivity makes the case that a deep understanding of moral conceptions and practices, including those of Islam, can never be reached simply by delineating their abstract logics or outlining the public messages they send. Instead, we must examine the subtle, sometimes intentionally obscured meanings these conceptions and practices have for the people who live them. Whether in the context of suffering or flourishing, moral subjectivity always confronts the challenge of responding to and managing the enduring tensions of human selves, which necessarily entail bodily, relational, and reflective dimensions.Less

Caged in on the Outside : Moral Subjectivity, Selfhood, and Islam in Minangkabau, Indonesia

Gregory M. Simon

Published in print: 2014-07-31

The moral practices and concepts that circulate in Minangkabau society in West Sumatra, Indonesia articulate and help manage tensions between conflicting values and conflicting experiences of selfhood, particularly the tension between social integration and individual autonomy. The book examines these tensions ethnographically in multiple arenas: the structure of the city of Bukittinggi and its economic life, the nature of Minangkabau ethnic identity, the etiquette of everyday interactions, conceptions of the self and its boundaries, hidden spaces of personal identity, and engagements with Islamic rituals and moral conceptions. Applying the lessons of the Minangkabau case more broadly to debates on moral life and subjectivity makes the case that a deep understanding of moral conceptions and practices, including those of Islam, can never be reached simply by delineating their abstract logics or outlining the public messages they send. Instead, we must examine the subtle, sometimes intentionally obscured meanings these conceptions and practices have for the people who live them. Whether in the context of suffering or flourishing, moral subjectivity always confronts the challenge of responding to and managing the enduring tensions of human selves, which necessarily entail bodily, relational, and reflective dimensions.

What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This book addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters ...
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What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This book addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the “professional” housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. The book examines work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in the book vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.Less

Capturing Contemporary Japan : Differentiation and Uncertainty

Published in print: 2014-08-31

What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This book addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the “professional” housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. The book examines work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in the book vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.

This book explores the irony of modern things made in the image of a traditional “us.” It describes the multifaceted ways “tradition” is produced and consumed within the frame of contemporary Korean ...
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This book explores the irony of modern things made in the image of a traditional “us.” It describes the multifaceted ways “tradition” is produced and consumed within the frame of contemporary Korean life and how these processes are enabled by different apparatuses of modernity that Koreans first encountered in the early twentieth century. Commoditized goods and services first appeared in the colonial period in such spectacular and spectacularly foreign forms as department stores, restaurants, exhibitions, and staged performances. Today, these same forms have become the media through which many Koreans consume “tradition” in multiple forms. In the colonial period, commercial representations of Korea—tourist sites, postcard images, souvenir miniatures, and staged performances—were produced primarily for foreign consumption, often by non-Koreans. In late modernity, efficiencies of production, communication, and transportation combine with material wealth and new patterns of leisure activity and tourism to enable the localized consumption of Korean tradition in theme parks, at sites of alternative tourism, at cultural festivals and performances, as handicrafts, art, and cuisine, and in coffee table books, broadcast music, and works of popular folklore. This book offers insight into how and why different signifiers of “Korea” have come to be valued as tradition in the present tense, the distinctive histories and contemporary anxieties that undergird this process, and how Koreans today experience their sense of a common Korean past. It offers new insights into issues of national identity, heritage preservation, tourism, performance, the commodification of contemporary life, and the nature of “tradition” and “modernity” more generally.Less

Consuming Korean Tradition in Early and Late Modernity : Commodification, Tourism, and Performance

Published in print: 2010-09-22

This book explores the irony of modern things made in the image of a traditional “us.” It describes the multifaceted ways “tradition” is produced and consumed within the frame of contemporary Korean life and how these processes are enabled by different apparatuses of modernity that Koreans first encountered in the early twentieth century. Commoditized goods and services first appeared in the colonial period in such spectacular and spectacularly foreign forms as department stores, restaurants, exhibitions, and staged performances. Today, these same forms have become the media through which many Koreans consume “tradition” in multiple forms. In the colonial period, commercial representations of Korea—tourist sites, postcard images, souvenir miniatures, and staged performances—were produced primarily for foreign consumption, often by non-Koreans. In late modernity, efficiencies of production, communication, and transportation combine with material wealth and new patterns of leisure activity and tourism to enable the localized consumption of Korean tradition in theme parks, at sites of alternative tourism, at cultural festivals and performances, as handicrafts, art, and cuisine, and in coffee table books, broadcast music, and works of popular folklore. This book offers insight into how and why different signifiers of “Korea” have come to be valued as tradition in the present tense, the distinctive histories and contemporary anxieties that undergird this process, and how Koreans today experience their sense of a common Korean past. It offers new insights into issues of national identity, heritage preservation, tourism, performance, the commodification of contemporary life, and the nature of “tradition” and “modernity” more generally.

Since the mid-1990s, Taiwan's unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese-language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. This book explores ...
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Since the mid-1990s, Taiwan's unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese-language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. This book explores Mandopop's surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC. It provides the historical background necessary to understand the contemporary Mandopop scene, beginning with the birth of Chinese popular music in the East Asian jazz Mecca of 1920s Shanghai. An overview of alternative musical genres in the PRC is included, followed by a look at the manner in which Taiwan's musical ethos has influenced the mainland's music industry and how Mandopop has brought Western music and cultural values to the PRC. This leads to a discussion of Taiwan pop's exceptional hybridity. The book addresses the resulting wealth of transnational musical influences from the rest of East Asia and the United States, and Taiwan pop's appeal to audiences in both the PRC and Taiwan. In doing so, it explores how Mandopop's “songs of sorrow,” with their ubiquitous themes of loneliness and isolation, engage a range of emotional expression that resonates strongly in the PRC. The book examines the construction of male and female identities in Mandopop and looks at the widespread condemnation of the genre by critics and attempts to answer the question: Why, if the music is as bad as some assert, is it so central to the lives of the largest population in the world? In response answer, it highlights Mandopop's important contribution as a poetic lament that simultaneously embraces and protests modern life.Less

Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow : Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations

Marc L. Moskowitz

Published in print: 2009-11-24

Since the mid-1990s, Taiwan's unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese-language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. This book explores Mandopop's surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC. It provides the historical background necessary to understand the contemporary Mandopop scene, beginning with the birth of Chinese popular music in the East Asian jazz Mecca of 1920s Shanghai. An overview of alternative musical genres in the PRC is included, followed by a look at the manner in which Taiwan's musical ethos has influenced the mainland's music industry and how Mandopop has brought Western music and cultural values to the PRC. This leads to a discussion of Taiwan pop's exceptional hybridity. The book addresses the resulting wealth of transnational musical influences from the rest of East Asia and the United States, and Taiwan pop's appeal to audiences in both the PRC and Taiwan. In doing so, it explores how Mandopop's “songs of sorrow,” with their ubiquitous themes of loneliness and isolation, engage a range of emotional expression that resonates strongly in the PRC. The book examines the construction of male and female identities in Mandopop and looks at the widespread condemnation of the genre by critics and attempts to answer the question: Why, if the music is as bad as some assert, is it so central to the lives of the largest population in the world? In response answer, it highlights Mandopop's important contribution as a poetic lament that simultaneously embraces and protests modern life.

This volume explores the cultural politics of gender and sexuality amidst rapid social, political, and economic transformations in contemporary Asia. To date, no edited books have brought together ...
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This volume explores the cultural politics of gender and sexuality amidst rapid social, political, and economic transformations in contemporary Asia. To date, no edited books have brought together studies of gender and sexuality from across many different societies in Asia. Few books focus on the lived experiences of gendered subjects, or the interfaces between political economy and gender and sexuality. This volume fills a significant gap in the literature and makes major contributions by not only exploring the intersections of gender and sexuality, but also integrating it with cultural and political economic analysis. This volume offers a current, grounded, and critical analysis of the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, and political economy across different societies in Asia, namely, China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. It centers on the stories of the gendered subjects themselves as an entrée into a systematic investigation of the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in Asia. Contributors in this volume have conducted intense ethnographic fieldwork in Asian societies, and their chapters unravel the ways in which intimate gendered and sexual experiences are impinged upon by state policies, economic realities, cultural ideologies, and social hierarchies. Their grounded, unique research sheds light on how configurations of gender and sexuality are constituted, negotiated, contested, transformed, and at times, perpetuated and reproduced in private, intimate experiences in the current era.Less

Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia

Published in print: 2016-02-29

This volume explores the cultural politics of gender and sexuality amidst rapid social, political, and economic transformations in contemporary Asia. To date, no edited books have brought together studies of gender and sexuality from across many different societies in Asia. Few books focus on the lived experiences of gendered subjects, or the interfaces between political economy and gender and sexuality. This volume fills a significant gap in the literature and makes major contributions by not only exploring the intersections of gender and sexuality, but also integrating it with cultural and political economic analysis. This volume offers a current, grounded, and critical analysis of the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, and political economy across different societies in Asia, namely, China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. It centers on the stories of the gendered subjects themselves as an entrée into a systematic investigation of the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in Asia. Contributors in this volume have conducted intense ethnographic fieldwork in Asian societies, and their chapters unravel the ways in which intimate gendered and sexual experiences are impinged upon by state policies, economic realities, cultural ideologies, and social hierarchies. Their grounded, unique research sheds light on how configurations of gender and sexuality are constituted, negotiated, contested, transformed, and at times, perpetuated and reproduced in private, intimate experiences in the current era.

This book investigates the nature of long-term resistance in a longitudinal study of more than fifty Japanese women over two decades. Between 25 and 35 years of age when first interviewed in 1993, ...
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This book investigates the nature of long-term resistance in a longitudinal study of more than fifty Japanese women over two decades. Between 25 and 35 years of age when first interviewed in 1993, the women represent a generation straddling the stable roles of post-war modernity and the risky but exciting possibilities of late modernity. By exploring the challenges they pose to cultural codes, the book builds a conceptual framework of long-term resistance that undergirds the struggles and successes of modern Japanese women. It establishes long-term resistance as a vital type of social change in late modernity where the sway of media, global ideas, and friends vies strongly with the influence of family, school, and work. Women are at the nexus of these contradictions, dissatisfied with post-war normative roles in family, work, and leisure and yet—in Japan as elsewhere—committed to a search for self that shifts uneasily between self-actualization and selfishness. In an epilogue, their experiences are framed by the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which is already shaping the future of their long-term resistance. The book posits that long-term resistance is a process of tense, irregular, but insistent change that is characteristic of our era, hammered out in the in-between of local and global, past and future, the old virtues of womanhood and the new virtues of self-actualization.Less

Dilemmas of Adulthood : Japanese Women and the Nuances of Long-Term Resistance

Nancy Rosenberger

Published in print: 2013-10-31

This book investigates the nature of long-term resistance in a longitudinal study of more than fifty Japanese women over two decades. Between 25 and 35 years of age when first interviewed in 1993, the women represent a generation straddling the stable roles of post-war modernity and the risky but exciting possibilities of late modernity. By exploring the challenges they pose to cultural codes, the book builds a conceptual framework of long-term resistance that undergirds the struggles and successes of modern Japanese women. It establishes long-term resistance as a vital type of social change in late modernity where the sway of media, global ideas, and friends vies strongly with the influence of family, school, and work. Women are at the nexus of these contradictions, dissatisfied with post-war normative roles in family, work, and leisure and yet—in Japan as elsewhere—committed to a search for self that shifts uneasily between self-actualization and selfishness. In an epilogue, their experiences are framed by the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which is already shaping the future of their long-term resistance. The book posits that long-term resistance is a process of tense, irregular, but insistent change that is characteristic of our era, hammered out in the in-between of local and global, past and future, the old virtues of womanhood and the new virtues of self-actualization.

Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese ...
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Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese citizens but practice Theravada Buddhism and have long-standing ties to the Theravāda communities of Southeast Asia. The book shows how Dai-lue Buddhists train their young men in village temples, monastic junior high schools and in transnational monastic educational institutions, as well as the political context of redeveloping Buddhism during the Reform era in China. While the book focuses on the educational settings in which these young boys are trained, it also argues that in order to understand how a monk is made, it is necessary to examine local agenda, national politics and transnational Buddhist networks.Less

Educating Monks : Minority Buddhism on China's Southwest Border

Thomas A. Borchert

Published in print: 2017-05-31

Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese citizens but practice Theravada Buddhism and have long-standing ties to the Theravāda communities of Southeast Asia. The book shows how Dai-lue Buddhists train their young men in village temples, monastic junior high schools and in transnational monastic educational institutions, as well as the political context of redeveloping Buddhism during the Reform era in China. While the book focuses on the educational settings in which these young boys are trained, it also argues that in order to understand how a monk is made, it is necessary to examine local agenda, national politics and transnational Buddhist networks.

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